Support Your Local Farmers and Cook Up a Storm in Under 30 Minutes with Thomas Farms Kitchen

Support Your Local Farmers and Cook Up a Storm in Under 30 Minutes with Thomas Farms Kitchen

Looking after your health and getting enough nutrients when you are expecting or caring for a new baby is paramount – we all know that – but let’s face it, it can be hard when you are so exhausted! Seriously, you don’t even know what real ‘tiredness’ is until you are pregnant or getting up to a baby throughout the night, do you? My youngest child is now six and even when I hit that proverbial brick wall at 3pm and day-dream about how wonderful a nap would be, I always cast my mind back to those early weeks (who am I kidding for me it was months) when I felt like a walking zombie.

I’ve always been a healthy eater (and by that I mean I eat a balanced diet with lots of fresh veggies, fruit and lean meat) but I’m sure if a real-life, bona-fide healthy-eater nutritionist type of person opened up my pantry and saw all the jars of sauces I use they might well disagree. (Sodium overload, anyone?) But, that aside, thinking back to my new-mum days I was so dog-tired that I relied on any kind of pick me up I could find in the kitchen cupboard in between nappy-changes, feeding and nap-times. (Theirs, not mine unfortunately). A handful of biscuits here and a chocolate hit there were my quick snack-grab go to’s. By the time dinnertime came around and my husband was coming home from work I’d either eaten my body-weight in Tim Tams in a futile attempt to sugar-fuel my body and mind into resembling a human, or was so exhausted from general baby-related tasks throughout the day, or so overwhelmed with trying to calm a cranky, overtired or colicky baby that I didn’t know what day it was, let alone that it was dinner-time!

It sounds like a pretty bleak image I’m painting. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the baby-stage, as exhausting as it was. But like many women I lacked family support. Just trying to time a grocery shop around my baby’s naptimes sometimes felt akin to organising a mission to Mars!

For the past fortnight I have been trialling meal-kits from Thomas Farms Kitchen and I can’t help thinking how amazing it would have been to have used a service like it when my kids were babies. Basically, you choose from the menu options on their website which meals you’d like to cook (there is a new menu each week) and then they deliver the fresh, locally sourced ingredients with easy to follow recipe cards to your door so you can whip up a delicious healthy meal in around 30 minutes! No preservatives, no additives or any of that other crap – just good wholesome farm-fresh ingredients directly from the producers. (And we all know how important it is to support our local farmers!)

Each week there are 11 recipes to choose from including 3 red meat, 3 white meat, 3 vegetarian and 2 seafood options at $12.50 per serve.

Deliveries arrive on Tuesdays and come packed in a foam esky with ice packs so even if you aren’t home and it needs to be left on your doorstep it’ll stay fresh and crisp for up to 8 hours.

The thing I loved about this trial was how easy the recipe cards were to follow and how quick it was to create a really delicious meal from scratch with all the necessary herbs and spices included. You just can’t beat real fresh flavour!

The first meal I cooked was the Green Chicken Curry. (We are a bit mad on curry in my house, so I was excited to be able to cook a proper one myself!) As you can see from the image above it literally took 27 minutes to whip this up and EVERYONE loved it! Better still, I didn’t cook enough rice for 74 people like I usually do. I love that the meals come perfectly portioned (so no wastage or temptation to overeat either!)

The Pork Bolognese topped with Pecorino was equally delicious! (I seem to have left out the tinned crushed tomatoes in the top image (whoops) but they were included. The only thing that I needed to use from the pantry for each meal was a splash of olive oil, and salt/pepper.

The Chicken and Sundried Tomato Meatballs with Spaghetti were a huge hit! I had kind of expected it to take much longer than the recipe card suggested (20 mins Prep and 20 minutes cook) having to make the meatballs, so I was pleasantly surprised when it actually took just 37 minutes from start to finish! And it tasted amazing!

Instead of looking at mealtimes with dread (why must they be fed EVERY DAY? Lol) I actually really enjoyed creating these meals! It’s given me back my mealtime mojo!

Although these meal kits were gifted to me for the purpose of this review I will definitely order more from them in the future. The quality of the produce was excellent, and I, like many Australians, am keen to support our farmers.

Visit Thomas Farms Kitchen and check out the recipes they have available for this week, and give them a try yourself. I promise, you won’t be disappointed!

Jolene is Editor at Mum Media Group, where she enjoys writing, sharing and connecting with other like-minded women online ÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂ it also gives her the perfect excuse to ignore Mount-Washmore until it threatens to bury her family in an avalanche of Skylander T-shirts and Frozen Pyjama pants. (No one ever knows where the matching top is!)
Likes: Reading, cooking, sketching, dancing (preferably with a Sav Blanc in one hand), social media, and sitting down on a toilet seat that one of her children hasnÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂt dripped, splashed or sprayed on.
Dislikes: Writing pretentious crap about herself in online bioÃÂ¢ÃÂÃÂs and refereeing arguments amongst her offspring.

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